The news has recently hit the press that China’s economy, measured on the purchasing-power basis that adjusts for price differences between nations, may surpass the U.S. in only another five years or so. Surprisingly, China has still shown no signs of morphing into the cuddly liberal and democratic nation, devoted to American ways from Coca-Cola to democracy, whose eventual appearance has been assumed by American policy for thirty years now.
Our policy during this period has, after all, enthusiastically cooperated with China’s efforts to build up its economic power–which entails, of course, every other kind of power, including the military kind. So our assumption of a benign China had better be right, or else we have been abetting the creation of a monster. A hostile China will be arguably even worse than the USSR, because it will not do us the favour of sabotaging its economy by adhering to a dysfunctional economic ideology.
Our policy during this period has, after all, enthusiastically cooperated with China’s efforts to build up its economic power–which entails, of course, every other kind of power, including the military kind. So our assumption of a benign China had better be right, or else we have been abetting the creation of a monster. A hostile China will be arguably even worse than the USSR, because it will not do us the favour of sabotaging its economy by adhering to a dysfunctional economic ideology.
翠花
